Repository of Anecdotes about DAO Best Practices [Grant Proposal]

Description

When I first joined MetaCartel, I had just ended a months-long run in ReallyBoringGuild. After the confusion that comes with grant ops at MolochDAO, I felt like I needed to tiptoe through MetaCartel as I learned the ropes. It may have seemed almost hypochondriac, but even with this caution I was still able to instigate disagreements and complications within MetaCartel. That messy experience is in the past, but the lessons learned from it are useful for future DAO inter and intra relations.

When I was getting podcast content together for a DAO or Never interview with Sky, I OHHhhh-ed, because he was describing best practices for getting proposals passed in a DAO that I had not thought of before. Had I known about what he described while I was doing grant ops for MolochDAO, I might have avoided some of the complications that occurred.

Let’s collect stories of wisdom and experience in a repository. Let’s share these stories as anecdotes for DAO best practices from MetaCartel, the community that’s actually deep in the messy complications of coordination.

Castle in the Sky: Would be great if this repository was part of MetaCartel’s GitHub and if it can receive pull requests, with additional anecdotes from the broader ecosystem.

Manifesto/Vision

Stories enhance communication within and between communities.

Stories encourage conversation about challenging topics.

Stories remind us that others have gone through the same challenges that we currently face.

Problem

Navigating the nuances of DAO coordination is challenging.

Solution

Collect and share lessons from DAO experiences, so mistakes aren’t repeated too often.

Product

Open source repository

Validation

Well, I helped conduct interviews and collect data for the MetaMoloch initiative in early 2022.

Progress

Repository of Anecdotes about DAO Best Practices [Coordination]

Differentiation

Often research on DAOs feels like it’s completed by people who are studying DAOs, not necessarily experiencing them. They may be participating in DAOs, but the perspective is from extracting findings. This research seems to also be missing the nuances of personal stories.

MetaCartel has nuanced stories from deep in the messiness of coordinating with decentralized teams, made up of autonomous individuals. Collecting these stories isn’t meant to replace peer reviewed research. It is instead a resource for community members and leaders to not only learn from our successes and mistakes, but to also feel less alone when dealing with the struggles of coordination.

Team

@BorrowLucid

Grant Request

1500 WXDAI for 15 anecdotes

Funds

Each anecdote requires the following (~1.5 hrs)

  • scheduling and coordination (~5 min)
  • interview to harvest stories (~30 min)
  • removal of any identifying information from the transcript (~15 min)
  • collaborative transcript editing with a robot (~30 min)
  • final edits and publish (~10 min)
  • at 100 WXDAI/anecdote, that works out to ~$66.6/hr

Help

  1. Advice is requested on
  • how best to store the data, so it’s easy to use in the future. For example, would it be best as markdown on Github, so anyone can submit pull requests with their own anecdotes about DAO best practices? Or, would it be better in a certain data structure that allows for easier reference for future research or publication? Or, is there an easy way to keep it updated, while live on a website?
  • what’s the best way to tag the data, so it’s not enormously tedious to search for topics?
  1. 30 minutes of your individual time is requested, so I can harvest stories from your DAO travels.
2 Likes

In considering the feedback I received privately, regarding this proposal, I would like to revise the ask to include 5 anecdotes at 0 WXDAI each, instead of 15 anecdotes at 100 WXDAI each. The request now only includes interviews with MetaCartel members and a place to store the data, preferably on MetaCartel GitHub. After these 5 stories have been shared, we can review whether this is a meaningful endeavor.

3 Likes

Attempting to answer the question, Who’s gonna read this?

Ideally, the learnings from these stories can initiate conversations in MetaCartel and any DAO that looks to MetaCartel as a leader in the DAO space. There’s no plan to market this repository, but if it’s always available on the MetaCartel GitHub, there’s a potential for people doing their own research on DAOs to search for MetaCartel and discover it. Would be nice if we could warn them of potential pitfalls and point them towards more beneficial actions.

2 Likes

I’ve begun a conversation with Lisa Wocken, a researcher, who knows of other projects about DAO practices that might want the stories proposed here. Of course, I would give priority to MC, but the response seemed to be a mix of support and critical questioning, so considering other homes seems responsible.

I like the idea in theory but would like it to be a bit wider curation across the other operators in the space. MC members are great input also, but getting buy-in in other ecosystems makes this a much more valuable resource that MC can put its stamp on.

2 Likes